Exhibition: Build the Truce, Imperial War Museum London, London, until September 23; IWM North, Manchester, until October 31 2012

After the civil war in El Salvador finished in 1992, while violence escalated, Kirsten Howarth worked with and interviewed some of those involved with the emerging “extreme gang culture”. Abas Eljanabi fled Kuwait in search of refuge abroad during the fragile truce after the Iran-Iraq War. And Jackie MacDonald and Seanna Walsh have both played their parts in the peace process in Northern Ireland – Walsh as a former IRA prisoner who was worked in community development since being freed under the Good Friday Agreement, MacDonald as a mentor to young people, having spent time as a UDA prisoner.

These are some of the voices whose stories are told in Build the Truce, an exhibition taking the peaceful interim the Olympic Games were partly made to provide as a starting point, then exploring the concept of truce through a project which has recorded the insights of those most keenly – and often painfully – aware of its potential to unite or divide.

Figures from the emergency aid effort in Kosovo and recuperative camps in Sierra Leone appear in a series of interviews, projected onto 27-foot high walls in the main exhibition space of the IWM north, creating a 360-degree backdrop.

Touchscreens, family activities and a weekend programme based around the International Day of Peace, on September 21, also take place in an initiative collaborated on by the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester.